Mastery
I’m reading George Leonard’s Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment and finding much that I like. It’s a short book, but will be of particular interest to Steve and Scott and, I think, The Eldest, since the Older Grandson seems to be following this path.
He talks about the importance of beginners and the beginner’s mind. It reminded me of the well-worn story of Ford K. Brown saying that the best students at St. John’s are "freshmen by nature," and the best tutors "freshman by nature willy nilly."
And he talked about the delights of practice: finding fulfillment in the journey. It’s certainly true that we in the US are conditioned to thing in terms of goals and their achievement. The payoff is the achievement, but that’s not true of most things: a meal is great, but selecting the viands, preparing and cooking them, and serving the meal should be of equal value—and the clean-up as well. The idea of getting to the "end" of something as a payoff fails spectacularly when we consider our own lives: are we all eager to get to the final act, dying? Probably not.
I thought about my handwriting—years ago I learned italic handwriting and took great delight in it, but I no longer practice. It occurred to me that this might be the impediment to my letter-writing, which has fallen off sadly. When I wrote letters by hand, the act of writing the letter was itself enjoyable. Not so much when I type the letter. So I plan to return to handwriting my letters and enjoy the practice of my italic.
